The Aroma of Christ In Our Lives

Image by Austin Russie

Spent some time over the weekend thinking about Isaiah 61:1-3:

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, 3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion - to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor” ~ Isaiah 61:1-3

As Tony McCullom explained on Sunday at Fusion, Israel had a pattern in their mourning. They would rip their clothes in anguish, take ash and spread it on their faces and then would wear sackcloth to signify to everyone around that they were mourning. It was a very outward expression of the inner turmoil going on in their lives. What’s amazing is that Jesus claims the beginning of this passage as an explanation of who He is as the Messiah in Luke 4. He reads the Scripture from Isaiah, “Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, ‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.’”

God comes to bind our brokenness, to wash our faces that show the pain and hurts of our lives, perfume us with joy, and dress us with a garment of praise in the place of our sackcloth. It’s a powerful, visible display of the restoration work that He is about in our lives. Sadly, I don’t see this outward change take place in a lot of people’s lives. There is no countenance change. If anything, they become angrier, stiffer, more condemning. While the “oil of gladness” has a perfuming quality - it carries a scent in our lives that others sense when they are around us - this overwhelming aroma is altogether absent many times.

Our faces can be windows into our faith. It is to be visible in both ways - both in displaying the beauty, joy and praise in our lives because of God’s grace, and in the transparent authenticity when we are struggling. Tony correctly noted that we, in western society, have no outward way to mourn. Inside the church it is even worse - we put the face on that we want others to see instead of allowing the pain to show through. And we are often times left on an emotional island because we do not allow others in our lives to help carry those burdens. It’s, many times, those same people that God would use to bring healing and a countenance change.

I watched about half of the Larry King Live appearance of Steven Curtis Chapman and his family talking about the tragic death of their daughter. I was impressed, not because there were smiles around the room (because there weren’t), but, rather, because they were authentic. Their mourning showed clearly - and yet there was a sense of peace and undergirding praise in their faces and in their words, in spite of their pain.

Posted 08.26.2008

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